Support serialization configuration

**Feature request**
It would be great to have notifications for utils.

**Use case**
Many users need this functionality for production deployments.

**Implementation idea**
Add a new config option `enable_notifications` with default `false`.

No file, test, or entry point is named. First locate the configuration handling and notification or utils code, then determine how the proposed enable_notifications option should affect production deployments. Done means the option defaults to false and notifications work when it is enabled, with coverage for both settings.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.